Some would say life was what you made it. To others, it was the result of the environment you grew up in. To Joe, it was a bit of both...

He sat in his office at the Philadelphia Municipal Airport, eyeing a handful of cards. Across from him sat an attentive piece of work. That person's cards were on the coffee table between the two sofas, face down. In their hand, writing instruments. A fresh looking pad and a signature pen of some sort. Joe had the thought to ask what the story was with the gold colored ink scribbler. But right now wasn't the time.

The focus wasn't even on the casual game that Joe loved so much. Even though he was still playing each hand as if it were for money, like he was in a casino in New York or a shit kicker of a place in Philadelphia, his mind wasn't at all on the outcome. It was just a way to pass the time and to keep the fingers busy as the mind was set to task.

The reporter had been with him for some time now. Joe had already slipped into a nice comfort zone with the help of a few shots of tequila. He wasn't too keen to let this lubricant work on him slowly. He needed to be loose, and quick. To be in the zone, ready and willing to mouth whatever thoughts arose. And where he was going, where his mind was gathering steam and legs, he would need it.

His past wasn't something he spoke of often. He knew it well enough and lived it partly sober enough to not need to. The lessons came and went, and in hindsight he often referenced the days past for opportunities to learn and grow. But when it came to letting words formulate around it, he had a hard time. There were many wounds involved. Many he feared to tread back over. The scars in his personality were enough of a sore spot to have him avoid the topic entirely.

But with all that was happening with his new venture and many other businesses he had his fingerprints on, he felt now was the time. And given his access to a news source in the heart of the city of brotherly love, it just made sense. He needed it to be told. His overall legacy depended on it. He believed that when you came across the tales of those that really made an impact on the world, it wasn't just about that impact. It was also about where they'd come from. What lives they'd lived before they shot into the spotlight, and the trials and tribulations of their earlier years.

Joe's eyes were on the cards but his mind was already there, back in New York, where it all began...

I was a little shit of a kid. My father always reminded me of that fact whenever I started acting up again. Like it would somehow have me change my tune and fall back in line. But that's not why he did. Because that just wasn't him. He was a smart man. A prideful man. And above all a kind-hearted and deeply caring man. So when he saw the opportunity to hightail it overseas to the land of the free, to give his family a new start away from the dictatorship of Mussolini, he practically jumped at the chance.

We rode that ship under a blanket like it were us all alone in a life raft. My mother, father and I. Yet I was told we were in the undercarriage of the ship with some great number of others. He said I didn't cry. Not once. I can't exactly remember it to tell you the truth. It was just so long ago. And I was so young. I do remember one thing though, the impact it would later have on my life to come. Not the experience itself, but just that ability to take a chance. To roll the dice and see where lady luck would take you.

Once in New York we settled into one of the immigrant and migrant fueled areas. My father would say it were as if Italy itself had descended upon the city in burrows like this. Thick accents spilled through the streets as men and women volleyed for shelter and food. It was a mad frenzy those first nights. And again, a catalyst for what life would have of me down the track. Why? I'll tell you, when one of your very first memories are of your father crying over you as your small family huddled into a doorway of a closed shop, trying to find a little respite from the downpour and to hopefully catch some form of shuteye, you'd be forever marked by it too.

And that was how we spent our first few weeks. From doorway to doorway, with our hands out trying to find some hearts that had food or goodwill to spare. By the end of the month, I'd become the main attraction. I'd be the one out there, all but 7, crying and pleading for attention. And when I got it, their pockets got it. Either by them relieving it of some of their coins so we could have another day with rations, or my hand eventually ending up in it for the same purpose.

It was a dog eat, dog world. And we were the runts of the suburban litter. Practically on all fours, begging for it. Praying for something to fall into our laps so we could get a leg up, so we could get moving. But the lesson here wasn't in how well you orchestrated your approach to how successful you'd become. Not exactly. It was more that if you really wanted something to happen in life, you just had to stop relying on others. And when you realized you had the power in your own hands the whole time, well, that was when things really started to happen. Good or bad, change was no longer an advanced mathematical equation.

What transpired next had a hint of skulduggery and all began with a chance encounter...

Fear came next. It was an eye opener and a soul crusher all in one. I'd never known the term before this moment. I'd only ever done what was asked. Create a distraction. Be quick with the hands and quicker with the feet. It was my father who carried it all. His back looked slow to break, like the weight of uncertainty piled onto his shoulders more and more with each passing day.

And so, I never felt the sting of it. The relentless damp blanket it suffocated you with, inducing thoughts and feelings alien to innocence. Only those with such tendencies were open to it, he would say. And he would know. He made me believe what I was doing was right. That society didn't care for us, so why should we care for it. What became a kind voice of reason, started out in New York as a bitter and slowly twisting soul.

I did the usual. I hid behind something in the alley as my father caught the attention of a passerby. I waited to hear the footsteps, and the words spoken between them before keeping low and moving swiftly. A quick set of hands later and I was pacing away from them as my father did the same in the opposite direction.

We were running away, when really we should've been moving towards the dream of the farmers market stall he spoke of, the dream that kept our spirits high. He poured it out of his heart with a fond longing when we huddled together after another day of scrounging. His words dimmed the homeless backdrop and made what we were doing a saintly tale. Because all heroic narratives started somewhere. And sometimes, they were just a pipe dream; castles in the sky.

This time I took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end, awaiting the disgruntled shouts to turn into an equally unhappy face at any moment. Still, this wasn't it. Fear didn't take me here. Just a heightened sense of things. And a deep anticipation for the war to come. I was young, but not without courage. I had that fighting spirit in me and no matter the cost I'd give 'em hell.

The face never came. I saw a shadow upon the wall that showed a tussle. The once loud and abrupt voice, calling for my head, sounded like it was gargling, choking on its own loss of salvation. I saw in the shadows the play of life and death. Like a puppeteer, the light of the street lamp was pulling at the strings against the white wash wall. The battle was one sided. The body, discarded after the victory. And it was now coming this way.

With a small knife in hand I waited. My teeth bared, a lion cub ready to join the hunt. I'd fare no better, but the courage wasn't in the results. It was in the willingness to act. And as the shadow grew and grew it finally took on a form as it rounded the corner into the opening of the one way alley I was at the opposite end of.

There it was, fear. In his eyes and spilling out of his trembling, outstretched hand. And with the other held against a wound on his abdomen, my father collapsed into a heap. I ran to him like the wind and skidded on my knees, not caring for the gravel rash to come. I never knew the man like this before. Maybe in his quiet times alone, when I would sneak a peak of him on his knees in prayer, it may have been so.

With him in my arms, he grabbed the back of my head and pulled me close. 'Boy, all I want is for you and your mother to be free.' His eyes spoke of a dark reluctance for what might follow. He didn't want it. He wasn't ready. He had too much to live for, too much to be responsible for. I didn't know it yet, but that was the difference. I didn't have anything to lose, whereas he had the whole world to, and that's what entered his mind and frightened him.

But now, with the realization these might be the last moments together, I broke down. Like a saucer smashing against the hard floor of truth, my innocence was split open as my heart filled with something for the first time. That anxiety would take a strong grip on me moving forward, like a vice stuck to my shoulder, whispering in my ear, in everything I'd do. It would be my motivating force. Good or bad, it would be the backbone to the skeleton of my storied youth.

I didn't want him to go. He's all I knew. He was the reason I did everything. My mind started on a life without him. It was bleak, black as the fierce emptiness I couldn't see beyond and that I was now spiraling into. Without him there was nothing. Tears filled my eyes as I told him he wasn't allowed to leave. That he couldn't. That I wouldn't let him. As his eyelids closed I slapped them back open again. And as I went to do it a second time a hand caught my wrist...

I would never have thought he'd be the one  nursing my dad back to health. Not the way the life he was saving would talk about him. Would talk about them. Corrupt agents were rife around these parts, my father use to tell me. Not to be trusted as far as you could spit on them. But the more I sat by his side in the man's own bedroom, I learned a valuable lesson, that you couldn't always judge someone based on a stereotype.

I'm not saying he was a saint. He drank every moment he seemed able to and played cards like he was doomed in he didn't touch a deck within a twelve hour period. He seemed to deal in shady circles, have more money than he knew what to do with, and enjoyed the opposite sex more casually than anyone I'd meet. But for whatever reason, he took us in and was making sure my father got the care he needed.

It took a few months before we were able to leave. In that time, we developed somewhat of an unlikely bond him and I. He was a quiet old man. Never spoke much. He let his actions be the words he wanted to say. If he wanted to play some cards, which happened every night, he'd simply slap a deck into my hands and expect me to join him at the kitchen table. If he wanted me to fetch him some liquor, he'd roll the tin cup on its side towards me.

Later in life I'd meet another like him, one that hardly used his vocal chords, and he too would have an impact on me I'd never forget. Agent O'Dwyer would go by the name Ace, which was fitting now that I think about it. I heard many guys outside his apartment calling him by that nickname, mostly meeting him in the dark of the night. I was usually by my father, as was my mother. He let us share the room as he set up his own in the lounge area, on the couch.

That's what I mean when I say he had an impact on me. For all his gambling and drinking, there was a softness in his soul, one he never seemed to question and one I'd always be thankful for, as it was what kept our family together in those early days in New York and what would remind me many times over that I could come back from the brink, no matter the shitty choices I would make along the way.

The knife wound would give my father further health complications later in life, but he'd always say, how were you to remember lady luck's face if she never left you any memento's to remember her by. He saw life's challenges as moments to learn something, to develop more character and resolve. He never trusted a man without burns, he would say, meaning someone who hadn't walked through the fiery gates of experience to be able to pay the toll wisdom bared.

O'Dwyer would become the first real friend we'd make in our new life stateside. The first person to actually give a damn about us to the extent it put himself out. Some called these circumstances coincidence. Others, fate. My father would say it in a kind of poetic way whenever we found ourselves in situations of the like. He'd say, "Well, look who I ran into," crowed Coincidence. "Please," flirted Fate, "this was meant to be."

I can see where he was coming from, especially with O'Dwyer. If not for him my father would've bled out in my arms, and nobody would've given a damn. Me and my mother, who knows what would've happened to us. And if not for him, the years to follow wouldn't have happened either. They were a mixture of good and bad and if you weighed them against each other you could say the bad tipped the scales.

To some that might be a loss. But to us, to a family rising from the depths of nothing, it was a stepping stone. A sharp set of circumstances that led us to be who we would eventually become. And like the chance meeting with O'Dwyer, one larger than life character would play another pivotal role soon after. He'd be the reason I became all that I did. He'd also be the reason I'd go away to prison for a stint. All were lessons, all fated if you asked my dad. And as some troubled relationships between guys began, it was through a cliched squabble over a flirt...